Small HTML parser

[Yohimbe]

Given an online commenting system similar to the monastery, and desiring flexibility, with security. I need a small that can take a snippet of html code and allow ONLY a short list of "approved" tags, ie, character formatting and linking only but no tables or blockquotes or javascript.
What I'm talking about starts with something like this:

sub cleanhtml ($) {
my $dirty_html=shift;
my @allowed_tags=qw(A B BR P I CODE PRE);

and ends with:

return $safe_html;
}